Meds wrote:Pretty much, and regardless of one's opinion of the Schneider trade, having Cory here wouldn't make that much of a difference.

False. Cory was the MVP last season and playing fantastic down the stretch (until injury). Cory is trending up. Roberto is trending down.

Cory could steal at least 5 or 6 games in an 82 game season, that's free points. He's also a little stronger in the shootout and just less of an overall distraction.

Losing Cory is a bigger issue than you suggest, particularly if Bo can't play some useful minutes in 2013-2014.

You're pretty good at missing the actual tense of a post.

The response was to a post regarding how good/bad the Canucks will be THIS year.

Cory was the MVP last season, but there were quite a few players that had big years over a 48 game schedule.

To date, Schneider has never played even half of a full NHL regular season (41 games). He has a single playoff victory, and in his 4 playoff losses he has already showcased a third period meltdown that rivals the ones that everyone throws Luongo under the bus for.

This season, Schneider would not have been the difference maker.

Down the road that may change. I expect Schneids to be a top 10 goaltender in this league, but look at what just happened.....he's still going to be a part-time goalie in Jersey this season. He won't actually get a crack at being the guy for a whole season until 2014-15.....and he will have been mentored at the highest level by two of the games best, arguably THE best in Marty Brodeur.

herb wrote:The only real hopes I have for the 2014 season is that there are some youngsters that should improve over what they provided last year (Kassian, Schroder, Tanev, Corrado), there is some hope for internal improvement from a handful of veterans who had ‘off’ seasons (Kesler, Booth, Burrows, Edler, Bieksa) and Gillis’ drafting seems to be improving. For a change, training camp should actually be interesting.

I love this.

It's pretty easy to have a better draft when the pool is as deep as this year's was and you are picking twice in the first round, and one of those is in the top 10. Shinkaruk should not still have been available at 24, he dropped considerably.

You can't judge a GM's drafting ability when he has consistently picked in the last 5 or so spots for most of his tenure. He grabbed Hodgson at 10th overall in 2008, but he had only been the GM of the team for 2 months at that point. He then picked Schroeder at 22nd in 2009. No pick in 2010. Then the team won consecutive President's trophies, and another division title. By the time you are out of the top 15 in almost any draft year the first round picks are as much a roll of the dice as the 2nds and some of the 3rds.

tantalum wrote:Yeah he isn't good at passing or using linemates and his defense is suspect at best but he does get to the net every shift. Something no one other than Kesler and hopefully Kassian do. Something the Kings have had in spades and causes all sorts of issues (Nolan, King, Penner, Clifford). A healthy Booth helps the team on the ice if ignoring the contract. Heck based on several of the recent signings you don't even need to ignore the contract. Guys with a history of 40+ point and 20 goal seasons are getting that type of money.

David Clarkson. $5.2M for 7 years. His best season is 46 points. He is a career 0.39 ppg player.

David Booth. $4.2M for 2 more years. His best season is 60 points. He is a career 0.52 ppg player.

Booth and Clarkson are the same age and play similar in that they both go hard to the net and aren't afraid of the corners or traffic.

It's pretty easy to have a better draft when the pool is as deep as this year's was and you are picking twice in the first round, and one of those is in the top 10. Shinkaruk should not still have been available at 24, he dropped considerably.

You can't judge a GM's drafting ability when he has consistently picked in the last 5 or so spots for most of his tenure. He grabbed Hodgson at 10th overall in 2008, but he had only been the GM of the team for 2 months at that point. He then picked Schroeder at 22nd in 2009. No pick in 2010. Then the team won consecutive President's trophies, and another division title. By the time you are out of the top 15 in almost any draft year the first round picks are as much a roll of the dice as the 2nds and some of the 3rds.

No doubt there are many factors, some of which you have summarized, but Gillis directly controls how many draft picks the team has. A big part of drafting is managing your picks, which Gillis controls directly. Gillis has also changed his drafting strategy a bit and is going more for the bigger, more Canadian style of player.

How many NHLers has Gillis produced? He has drafted one player who is a regular NHLer at this point. Schroeder may or may not turn out, and almost all of the players from the 2008-2010 drafts can safely be tossed into the garbage can (Cannata may turn out).

On the other hand, 2011 onward looks a lot more promising and like there may actually be some NHL players produced. Already Jensen and Corrado have played in the NHL from the 2011 draft. Gaunce and even Mallet look like solid picks from 2012.

herb wrote:The only real hopes I have for the 2014 season is that there are some youngsters that should improve over what they provided last year (Kassian, Schroder, Tanev, Corrado), there is some hope for internal improvement from a handful of veterans who had ‘off’ seasons (Kesler, Booth, Burrows, Edler, Bieksa) and Gillis’ drafting seems to be improving. For a change, training camp should actually be interesting.

I love this.

It's pretty easy to have a better draft when the pool is as deep as this year's was and you are picking twice in the first round, and one of those is in the top 10. Shinkaruk should not still have been available at 24, he dropped considerably.

You can't judge a GM's drafting ability when he has consistently picked in the last 5 or so spots for most of his tenure. He grabbed Hodgson at 10th overall in 2008, but he had only been the GM of the team for 2 months at that point. He then picked Schroeder at 22nd in 2009. No pick in 2010. Then the team won consecutive President's trophies, and another division title. By the time you are out of the top 15 in almost any draft year the first round picks are as much a roll of the dice as the 2nds and some of the 3rds.

Herb probably meant picking big and physical players over small but skilled players. Seriously picking Schroeder at 22nd was a mistake. A small player needs to consistently put up points to be effective in the NHL. In Schroeder's case, he is not good enough to take over Henrik's or Kesler's spot. Schroeder is not big enough to be a effective 3rd or 4th line centre. MG could have picked Jordan Caron, Tim Erixon, or even Kyle Palmieri instead. In the last three drafts, MG mostly picked big and physical players. The most noticeable picks are Jensen, Grenier, Gaunce, Mallet, and Horvat. All of those kids are built for the NHL rather than gambles. I would call that an improvement.

herb wrote:The only real hopes I have for the 2014 season is that there are some youngsters that should improve over what they provided last year (Kassian, Schroder, Tanev, Corrado), there is some hope for internal improvement from a handful of veterans who had ‘off’ seasons (Kesler, Booth, Burrows, Edler, Bieksa) and Gillis’ drafting seems to be improving. For a change, training camp should actually be interesting.

I love this.

It's pretty easy to have a better draft when the pool is as deep as this year's was and you are picking twice in the first round, and one of those is in the top 10. Shinkaruk should not still have been available at 24, he dropped considerably.

You can't judge a GM's drafting ability when he has consistently picked in the last 5 or so spots for most of his tenure. He grabbed Hodgson at 10th overall in 2008, but he had only been the GM of the team for 2 months at that point. He then picked Schroeder at 22nd in 2009. No pick in 2010. Then the team won consecutive President's trophies, and another division title. By the time you are out of the top 15 in almost any draft year the first round picks are as much a roll of the dice as the 2nds and some of the 3rds.

Herb probably meant picking big and physical players over small but skilled players. Seriously picking Schroeder at 22nd was a mistake. A small player needs to consistently put up points to be effective in the NHL. In Schroeder's case, he is not good enough to take over Henrik's or Kesler's spot. Schroeder is not big enough to be a effective 3rd or 4th line centre. MG could have picked Jordan Caron, Tim Erixon, or even Kyle Palmieri instead. In the last three drafts, MG mostly picked big and physical players. The most noticeable picks are Jensen, Grenier, Gaunce, Mallet, and Horvat. All of those kids are built for the NHL rather than gambles. I would call that an improvement.

I wasn't defending his pick in 2009. Not even a little bit. Schroeder looked good in junior and had some really good WJC tournaments. But that doesn't translate to the NHL all of the time.

Meds wrote:Pretty much, and regardless of one's opinion of the Schneider trade, having Cory here wouldn't make that much of a difference.

False. Cory was the MVP last season and playing fantastic down the stretch (until injury). Cory is trending up. Roberto is trending down.

Cory could steal at least 5 or 6 games in an 82 game season, that's free points. He's also a little stronger in the shootout and just less of an overall distraction.

Losing Cory is a bigger issue than you suggest, particularly if Bo can't play some useful minutes in 2013-2014.

You're pretty good at missing the actual tense of a post.

The response was to a post regarding how good/bad the Canucks will be THIS year.

Cory was the MVP last season, but there were quite a few players that had big years over a 48 game schedule.

To date, Schneider has never played even half of a full NHL regular season (41 games). He has a single playoff victory, and in his 4 playoff losses he has already showcased a third period meltdown that rivals the ones that everyone throws Luongo under the bus for.

This season, Schneider would not have been the difference maker.

Down the road that may change. I expect Schneids to be a top 10 goaltender in this league, but look at what just happened.....he's still going to be a part-time goalie in Jersey this season. He won't actually get a crack at being the guy for a whole season until 2014-15.....and he will have been mentored at the highest level by two of the games best, arguably THE best in Marty Brodeur.

I read your post, knew it was about THIS year, and responded in kind.

I don't have to go through the reasons again why Cory will be a better player this season than Luongo, but in my view he will be (primarily for the reasons stated above but also for others).

Frankly, I think Cory could have been a difference maker for the Canucks, this year. Unfortunately, we will never know.

As for your analysis of Cory's playoff record? Please.

This guy has never had the benefit of going into a series where the team wasn't in full shit-the-bed mode. Whether its coming in after shellackings at the hands of Chicago or Boston or down 2-0 buzz, this guy has never had the chance to lead a team into the playoffs on equal footing (or at least not after an epic and doubt inducing loss).

As for Cory's alleged lack of a starts? Give me a break, he's been earning starts away from Luongo year after year. If Luongo is indeed better (or even substantially similar), it never would have happened that way. Anyway, he has 98 starts (more than the average NHL goalie's career). Not sure how many more one needs before he can be considered legit...100? 150? 200? 1000?

Hodgson was a consensus pick at number 10. I recall almost everyone being pretty stoked at the pick. There were even those that felt he was Canada's MVP in the Jr tournament ahead of Tavares. If not for the back injury CoHo would have made the team out of camp and gotten off to a better start with the organization. Unfortunately he was labelled as lazy or a prim donna by Canuck brass and that only heightened the animosity. From there it was all daddyhill. MG made the right pick at the time.

JS was a questionable pick but he did come off a good Jr tournament that saw him have some great games. The game was also supposed to be changing to allow for the small skilled players to shine. The game never really changed.

I think MG has realized from that pick that it was perhaps a mistake. Jury is still out IMO. He has done much better since then but of course we have yet to see the fruits of those picks. Again, we haven't had a top three pick in, ever, so it's not like he passed on a Crosby or Malkin or OV or Stamkos or....

The next 2-4 years are the critical years in terms of development and is seeing if MG has screwed the pooch or not.

He has had on very good college pick up in Tanev and time will tell if Lain is a keeper or not, not goal keeper but player keeper

He has stocked the cupboard with young goalies and that is encouraging. Look at the Flames, to name one team although you can name many, that have zero goalie depth.

His trades have been the weak area. Ballard never panned out, Booth has been hurt most of the time he has been with us and Kassian has yet to break out, if he ever does.

His FA signings I think have been very good, for the most part. I'm talking top 4 on the back end and top nine up front.

Perhaps the biggest gift has been the fact that he had a very strong group to begin with and this gave him time to learn. The team has not been anywhere close to the bottom and has played some very entertaining hockey. But now its time for his marks to show up and then he gets judged. If he fails to win with this core and has to re-build then I'll hold my breath.

With 30 teams we are still top 15, at least, and that makes us a playoff team. So being a glass half full sorta gal I like our odds better than that of a lot of other teams, especially ones that have never had the luxury of tanking for years to stock pile top 3 picks.

Mondi wrote:As for Cory's alleged lack of a starts? Give me a break, he's been earning starts away from Luongo year after year. If Luongo is indeed better (or even substantially similar), it never would have happened that way. Anyway, he has 98 starts (more than the average NHL goalie's career). Not sure how many more one needs before he can be considered legit...100? 150? 200? 1000?

98 starts.

Cory Schneider is 27 years old!

Frank Caprice had 102 starts by the time he was 25 years old.

Roberto Luongo had 341 NHL starts by the time he was Schneider's present age.

Roberto Luongo was 22 years old when he played his 98th NHL game.

I use Caprice/Luongo as examples you may be familiar with.

"average NHL goalie's career"?? - so now we're comparing Schneids to flashes in the pan/career backups??

Okay, Cory is a "legit" NHL backup.... happy??

How many times must I go through this with you Mondi?

Cory "Panic Attack" Schneider has not proven anything yet.

And IF he were to become a stellar #1 NHL goaltender, he would be a prototypical "late bloomer".